Life coach Anaru
Barton told RNZ that ministry staffers had alerted him over
the weekend that some of his information had been
compromised.

"They said the breach wasn't a problem,
really, it was just a third party using information."

Mr
Barton said it sounded like the ministry was trying to
downplay the mistake and was looking after the organisation
"more so than looking after me".

"Breaches of privacy are
obviously quite serious.

"This is the government we're
talking about. They should know the laws more than anybody
about privacy and making sure information is secure."

He
said it was "unsettling" to think that copies of his birth
certificate and driver's licence could be in the hands of
fraudsters.

"I don't know how many people, or who, or
where my information has gone," Mr Barton said.

"My trust
levels for giving anything to the government now are pretty
low.

"Somebody has to be held to account for this."

The
ministry had not advised him what steps he could take to
protect himself, he said.

"Basically, all they've asked me
to do is respond to an email ... and give them consent to
work on my behalf."

On Monday, the ministry's chief
executive Bernadette Cavanagh told Morning Report: "I
have asked for an independent review to thoroughly look at
what happened and make sure this does not happen again and
can I also just say how sorry I am to the individuals that
are affected, this is completely unacceptable and we are
doing everything we can to help them through it...

"We
have been in touch with Google and some of the other big
search engines and have asking them to remove cached images
wherever possible and we will keep doing that work with
other partners across government to try to get those images
offline."

"I think it does come down to poor practice
and not really considering what sort of data that they were
storing and what's an appropriate place to store it.

"I
know there have been suggestions from the head of the
Ministry of Culture and Heritage that this is a coding
error, that doesn't really sit right with me ... this
appears just to be a standard Word Press website, a lot of
organisations use this type of website, but it's not the
sort of place you should be storing very confidential
information such as people's passports and personal
identification."

He said while
most of the information was gone from the internet, the
question was who had accessed it while it was
online.

"This could be a problem for them for months if
not years to come because others are now able to impersonate
them and they could do all sorts of things when they [can]
pretend to be someone else."

Mr Spain said the issue
couldn't be put right.

"The cat's out of the bag now, it's
a lesson to be learned, and not just by government ... this
is a challenge right across the country ... everybody wants
to see a copy of your personal identification and in many
cases there are not good robust processes for how that
information is stored."

Privacy Commissioner John Edwards
said the breach had the potential to undermine confidence in
people's interactions with the government.

Whether people were in any kind of
danger depended on the type of documents uploaded and how
fast people could get replacement documents, he
said.

Identity theft was one of the risks, but so was
fraud and personal security in some circumstances.

"I
understand that this was a third party provider who had been
commissioned to provide this functionality so one thing that
I think is quite important is that this does not necessarily
indicate a lack of security across all government platforms,
which I think generally is of a very high level."

Ms
Cavanagh said the third party provider hadn't been involved
in any other websites.

Replacing
documents

On Sunday, Ms Cavanagh said her "number
one focus" was providing support to those affected.

"We're
taking whatever measures we possibly can, whether that be
giving them new documents, new passports, new drivers'
licences.

"And also trying to provide support and advice
... that they might be able to take to be a bit more
sensitive and cautious now that their information has been
unfortunately published."

All those affected had been
offered replacement documents free of charge, Ms Cavanagh
said.

Those included passports and drivers'
licences.

The ministry had also created a "one stop shop"
webpage with information for those affected.

Ms Cavanagh
told Morning Report many of its questions for her
would be answered by the review into the
breach.

No confidence

National MP Nicky
Wagner told RNZ the error appeared to be "a mixture of
carelessness and naivety"

She said the public's faith in
the government's ability to keep information safe would be
disappearing fast.

"I have no confidence and I can't
expect the public to have confidence. This is
appalling."

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